Posted
by
timothyon Sunday April 08, 2012 @10:31AM
from the location-aware dept.

Techdirt reports that the latest versions of Wikipedia's mobile appshave switched to OpenStreetMap from Google Maps. Says Techdirt's commentary: "One wonders how Google didn't see this coming — or if they did, what exactly their strategy is here. OpenStreetMap is gaining a lot of momentum, and in some areas even features much better data. The real lesson here is that there's never an incumbent that isn't at risk of being unseated, no matter how widespread the adoption of their product or service—especially if they make an anti-customer decision like Google when it put a price tag on Maps. The situation also points to the long-term strength of open solutions: while a crowdsourced system like OpenStreetMap never could have put together a global mapping product as quickly as Google did, over time it has become a serious competitor in terms of both quality and convenience."

If this and DuckDuckGo start gaining momentum google may find itself in Altavista's shoes.

I agree. Have already switched to DuckDuckGo and it's a breath of fresh air to miss out on the ads and not worry about being tracked. I have contributed to OpenStreetMap and have seen the content on it it grow over the last couple of years at a terrific rate. It has the potential to be an absolute goldmine of information as more people contribute gps tracks and local points of interest.

Which will last until duckduckgo starts getting more traffic than is being paid for by the ad's, and suddenly, duckduckgo becomes the next google, where the ads are compulsory. As much as we hate it, we have to realize, the ads pay for these fantastic magical services, so that you don't have to fork over 5$ or 10$ or 15$ a month to use them. Nothing is free. Ever.

I'm sure Google is shaking in its shoes over yet another two open source projects doomed to failure. With rare exception, open source projects end up half assed, 90% feature complete, and skip implementation of anything difficult. The "it's good enough" approach.

Please, show me an open source project that truly rivals Gmail. Do it. One that implements ALL of the features. Including collaborative antispam, Ajax, contacts, archiving. Come on.

To further elaborate, the only reason I'm not still using (al)pine is because of enigmail for thunderbird. Now that no one I know uses pgp/gpg anymore, I may go back to pine, encrypting stuff manually when absolutely needed. Sometimes it's nice to have programs that do more than one thing, even if they do them half-arsed.

If you do things the UNIX way, you can easily beat the features and convenience of Gmail.

Good point. But if each domain's administrator has to research and cobble together tools from disparate sources and then write his own glue code, that's a strike against convenience. So what collection of UNIX-way tools do you recommend that "easily beat[s] the features and convenience of Gmail"? Say I'm running Debian or Ubuntu on a server that I administer; what all should I apt-get install? Furthermore, one still needs a server on which to run this collection of tools, and Gmail on a domain is free of ch

Cubemail, Squirelmail, etc all have Ajax and contact.
Archiving is as simple as "move to archives/" to match google's
for collaborative anti-spam (and I don't even think google's IS collaborative) you can use spam-assasin on the server, the client (thunderbird, etc), or anywhere else along the line
for searching there is thunderbird's search or notmuch search (both of which I have used and are VERY powerful).
for the server itself you can go with dovecot or any number of OSS mail servers.

Of all things, autocomplete was the one that you missed most? Really? I mean, really?I would understand it if you said that DuckDuckGo lacks e.g. an (own) image searching feature of searching features in general, but stuff like autocomplete are mostly fluff if you ask me. And DuckDuckGo has its own neat ideas implemented in its own algorithms. I won't argue that DuckDuckGo is better than Google (because it isn't), but its nice to have some competition around. And, no, Bing does not count (because it sucks).

I would like to use DDG too, but the only thing it has which is useful (at least as of now) is the zero-click info-box. The actual search results are quite horrible compared to what Google provides (probably because DDG relies essentially on Bing, which is having huge problems keeping their database in good shape).

If this and DuckDuckGo start gaining momentum google may find itself in Altavista's shoes.

Eh... OpenStreetMap is good for just that: street maps. It's got nothing on Google's other mapping features. Hell, it doesn't even show the lake where my cabin is at, just the streets. Google Maps offers detailed satellite and terrain imagery, for one thing.

For instance, when I open the map to my local region near Toronto, Toronto does not appear. Vaughan and Brampton, suburbs, do. Now admittedly, there are many "cities" in the area of Toronto, so one might suspect this has something to do with Z-layering or such.

But, no, that does not appear to be a problem.

At the same zoom level, far away in northern Ontario, Haileybury appears. This is a town of a few thousand people. The cites of Sudbury, about 100,000, and North Bay,

Toronto renders in large black letters at all zoom levels above z7. A search for toronto results in the city in canada as the first hit, and links to a page with Toronto written in the centre of it in large black letters.

I concur. The level of map quality and usability in Australia is beyond primitive. This might be great in the US of A but I am far from impressed. I'll be sticking with Google Maps thanks. If Apple wants to move iPhone over to this (as they do, I understand) a lot of people outside the US are going to be pissed of with their iPhone's map quality (and 4G capability, presumably) - but then again my friend has an iPhone4 and his Google Maps doesn't even have Navigation - I don't know if this is simply because

I think OSM actually started in the UK; it certainly seems to be further along there than in the US. But the tools are pretty easy; you should try fixing your neighborhood streets and see if you like it. I did, and there are some little details which most map data won't have which I added (little paths, stuff like that). It's open, it needs people to actually put in the data.In the UK & US, you can get Navfree (uses OSM maps) for ios & Android; I sometimes check it when I'm driving around & if I

More over what makes Google Maps so useful is its integration with search results and navigation. Plus you can embed maps on your site for free, which OSM can't allow because they don't have a server farm to support it.

If this and DuckDuckGo start gaining momentum google may find itself in Altavista's shoes.

Eh... OpenStreetMap is good for just that: street maps. It's got nothing on Google's other mapping features. Hell, it doesn't even show the lake where my cabin is at, just the streets. Google Maps offers detailed satellite and terrain imagery, for one thing.

Exactly. Google Maps even has the side roads and the dirt trail that my house is on, visible both in streetmap and in satellite views.

At present, OpenStreetMap barely even shows the lake as a splotch of blue, and south of the nearby town proper it only shows the motorway. It indicates nothing but blank forest for many kilometers of exurb, where houses are typically every 50-100 meters along every road and dirt track (and there are a lot of side roads and dirt tracks). Some day, OpenStreetMap may even sho

And, to add creepy insult to injury, it shows every miserable two track goat path and jeep road on every ranch in west texas. right up to my front door. This is why we get those people on the news who get lost in the ass end of Utah or something, and spend a week slowly freezing to death in the mountains because they where blindly following roads they saw 'on the internets'

Have you taken the time to report this to Google? They are generally responsive to fixing things. I have reported problems covering pronunciation issues, new roads, interchange rebuilds, and misplaced pins. They always get fixed within about a month.

So add the lake at your cabin (should be tagged natural=water; name=); add your cabin (should be tagged building=cabin; name=; addr:streetname=; addr:housenumber=); tag the paths around it (should be tagged as highway=path or highway=footway, depending on how formal they are); tag the tracks around it (should be tagged as highway=track); add parking near by it (should be tagged amenity=parking and possibly access=private); tag the forest (should be tagged landuse=forest) surrounding the lake;...

You know you can add that lake where your cabin is, OSM has some aerial imagery that you can use to trace it out in their online editor. I have added in the various trails though the woods on the public land where I hunt. There is a fairly extensive set of ATV and hiking trails that run through the public land up there. I add stuff all the time to OSM, mostly in my town but when I go places I bring my GPS and map out trails, roads, building, landmarks, etc then upload and get it added to OSM.

I'm fairly certain that our mapping rate has platoed and will increase at a logarithmic rate. The only exception would be if detail became increased (topo, satelite, etc). But as for roads/lake/borders, those are about as precise as anyone would need already (we just have some missing pieces so far).

Actually, one of the main reasons that I use an OSM app on my phone instead of the Google Maps one (aside from the fact I don't need a corporate stalker) is that it isn't serving tiles to me. I just grab the data once and store it on my phone. That means I can use the maps with my phone's GPS when I'm out of signal range (or somewhere with only GPRS signals, where using Google Maps is a bit painful) or when I'm in a different country and the data roaming charges would make it stupidly expensive.

The OSM data is licensed in a way that allows redistribution and the project actively encourages people to do this. Clients are allowed to aggressively cache or mirror the data, something which Google or Bing maps do not allow.

What app do you use and what is your work flow? It's been about a year since I've looked into it but it just wasn't a simple. "Do This This and This". I'm going to be traveling to Germany in a few weeks and although my droid will be a useless phone (CDMA) I'd love to take it as a GPS/portable computing device.

One thing to check on: it seems that a lot of the AGPS (Assisted GPS) devices in phones these days won't work at all if they don't get a signal from the network. There were some interesting reports from folks in a few areas where their cellular networks went down for a day or two and GPS completely stopped working. So check to see if yours is one that will even work if it has no CDMA signal.

I use OSMAnd. With the free version I need to grab the map files manually, although the paid one will download them from in-app. I currently have maps for northern France, Belgium, and the UK on my SD card, taking up a bit over 1GB.

Really? My phone isn't exactly the fastest around - it's an HTC Desire, so about two years old - and redraws happen fast. It's very fast if you use tiles rather than vector maps, but that comes at the cost of either more network or storage usage. The only time it's really slow is when you find the zoom level that has half a country in it but it still tries to draw most of the road. I've never seen it crash either. Route finding could be a bit faster, but it's only a beta feature at the moment.

I've got a HD2, so almost exactly the same hardware. One should think that 1ghz ARM ought to be enough, had a pretty decent navigation on 400 mhz XScale and Windows Mobile years ago, just not for the bicycle. Anyway, thanks for the information about tiles, will try that out as soon as I find out, how to download tile maps instead of vector maps for offline use.

I use Locus. Paid version of Locus is awesome, although the sheer number of features makes it a little complicated for non-techies.

Also, make sure you download the AGPS data before you leave (and periodically during your trip). You can download the free version of "GPS Status" to help you do this. Otherwise you'll have trouble getting a GPS fix abroad.

One option is a free maps app called Locus. I used this last time I was in Europe. Used Locus to browse to the places I was going, selected the area of interest and downloaded the maps to my phone, typically the city centre in high detail and the wider city in a lower zoom level. I've done the same thing going out into the bush and onto remote islands.

Locus gives you a choice of a variety of maps providers and with a little hack you can use it with Google maps too, though OSM does a wonderful job.

I use MapDroyd for this on my Android phone (free), and CityMaps2Go on my iPhone ($2). Both are very basic -- no navigation -- but they have nice integrated UIs for selecting and downloading maps. You won't be able to load the whole world, but I loaded NYC, all of NJ, and all of the Netherlands, using county/province level maps (which have perfect detail; I feel no need to get the city-level maps at all), and all that fits in a gigabyte or two. If you plan ahead and download only the maps for the areas you

Try Navfree:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.navfree.android.OSM.ALL [google.com] There's also a Navfree USA, which you can play with. They store the maps locally, and you can download just the states/countries you want. I have two issues with it - the address search is pretty bad (but if you have data I think it uses Google or something to help) and around me the maps, even the latest ones, are pretty out of date - they don't seem to actually be grabbing new OSM data when they release a map update in my

The openstreetmap project does provide a fantastic result, but for me it is lacking satellite imaging (as google does) or satellite imaging and aerial pictures (as bing/microsoft does)
Having the images can be very handy... I see very often people who need to determine the distance between two points and for that, the images are easier than the maps.

I see this come up quite a lot, so I assume there's a genuine will to look at sat imagery... What I don't understand though is why... OSM's maps (at least in well mapped areas) show more detail (yes, more) than satellite imagery. For example, they show where that path goes, when it disappears into a forrest;)

Well I guess Google carefully considered pros and cons before charging for maps and if they didn't is their problem.
The summary (yes, I didn't RTFA) seems to imply that the right or normal thing would be that google dominated the maps landscape. Well, obviously they have to compete with everyone else and if a decision makes them lose clients it's their problem. Maybe that loss was calculated and they calculated they'd get more benefits in the long run if they get rid of non-paying customers.

In my country there are very good 1:25000 maps, but the trails in the wooded areas can be off by hundreds of meters because they we mapped before the time of the GPSs and there's no way to use a theodolite acurately on a forest trail. Come the GPS: I take a track, clean it up a bit, upload it to OSM and the trail is now a lot more accurate than the best maps available...

Superior for a lot of things. I'm moving to Cambridge soon, and the university accommodation office uses both Bing and Google maps for their web site (no idea why - it seems quite random which one you get). Neither of them even labels all of the colleges, let along the university buildings. In contrast, OSM labels all of the colleges, most of the university buildings, and even a lot of shops, pubs, and restaurants are there by name.

When I visited a friend in Paris, Google Maps had the street he lived on labelled, but OSM had the building numbers marked as well.

That said, there are a few places where it is less good. For example, it doesn't have integrated route finding, but there are third-party route finders using the same data. If you want to create a map with one marker on it and send it as a link to someone, you can do it via the OSM web interface, but the UI is pretty horrible. If you want multiple tags, then you need to host your own OpenLayers thing and write some JavaScript. The search feature in OSM is pretty poor as well. It doesn't factor distance into account (although the one on the OSM client on my phone does), so if I search for a street name while looking at a city in the UK, I often have to scroll past a dozen streets in random US cities with the same name before I find the right one.

As I said, there are some very good third-party sites using the same data. For example, The Open Source Routing Machine [project-osrm.org] is very fast, seems to route well, and has a much nicer search feature. Unfortunately, it's AGPL, so it's unlikely to be integrated into... well, anything else. As to scalability, the model where anyone can set up a server for the data that they care about seems that it will scale better than the model where Google has to serve everything and then work out how to justify the expense...

Last time I checked, maps is still free for people to use, they're just charging for commercial use, but that makes perfect sense. If you're a business, I can't see why you'd be complaining about having to pay a little something that makes it easier for your customers to find you. Nobody is forcing you to use Maps. Go ahead and switch if the expense is too much for you. As TFS states, there are other alternatives.

Well, I suppose that small business will move on to one of those cheap or free alternatives, won't they?

Google Maps is obviously more than just a map, and the fact that commercial users are so pissed off about the fact that it costs money now proves that there is substantial value in integrating Google Maps, value that they were getting gratis, otherwise they would just say "fuck it" and move on to something else without all the bitching.

It's not like this is the first time that a commercial user has had to pay for something a private user got for free. Google's a business, too, and I'm sure that it costs them a fortune to maintain and update Maps. Maybe not $10,000 per year, per commercial license, but then again, there's a story right here on Slashdot [slashdot.org] about how Apple makes $575 per handset sold to Google's $2, and there are plenty of people that see no issue with that, so I don't understand the complaining here.

Well, unless it's another one of those "Apple deserves to make money hand over fist, but no one else!!" opinions, but I don't bother arguing with those people because they're retarded.

Google Maps is obviously more than just a map, and the fact that commercial users are so pissed off about the fact that it costs money now proves that there is substantial value in integrating Google Maps, value that they were getting gratis, otherwise they would just say "fuck it" and move on to something else without all the bitching.

The reason businesses are complaining is sunk cost. They spend money developing things using the Google Maps APIs, believing that they were free, and now they're not. Developing with OpenLayers is about as easy and confers the same advantages without needing a licensing cost, although if you're serving a lot of clients then you're expected to serve the tiles yourself, but the software is all free, it's just hardware and bandwidth costs. If Google Maps had been this expensive from the start, then it would not have been a problem - companies would have just not developed things based on it in the first place.

The reason businesses are complaining is sunk cost. They spend money developing things using the Google Maps APIs, believing that they were free, and now they're not.

Isn't that always a risk when choosing to utilize and integrate a free service into your business, though? I admit, I don't own a business, but it seems like something that would be a factor in deciding what software I would use.

I suppose I can't fault commercial users for assuming the Maps API would be free to use forever and being irritated about the fact that they now have to decide whether to pay them or move to an alternative, but I can't fault Google for doing this any more than I can legitimately fa

Say what? Google Maps has always had the scepter of fees for commercial use. The previous(?) standard was that if your site was not publicly accessible you'd have to buy an annual license. I thought that ToS already indicated high traffic sites would potentially be required to pay... guess not. If you are/were designing a business around a commercial product like Google Maps and believed it is/was free, you are/were doing it wrong.

In a previous life I had to evaluate potential alternatives to Google Map

They are the company most known for giving away stuff for free to gain market share

Perhaps now they feel they've captured a significant enough portion of the market and decided to start capitalizing on it? That would be my (admittedly uninformed) guess. I can't even tell you the last time I got a link or saw an embedded map that was of the Yahoo or Bing variety.

I mean, it was great while it lasted, but things change; there wouldn't be nearly as many people angry about this if it wasn't beneficial to them to be using it in the first place, and Google wants a cut now that everybody and th

This might be a little "tinfoil hat", and I doubt very much if it is the main reason why google started charging - but I just wonder if longer term thoughts like project glass might factor into their decision.

Products like Glass are basically just one big world of maps - mapping, satellite, traffic, public transport. Giving that away completely free no-strings-attached forever would just allow others to make products without the overhead that google have to shoulder alone. Something like glass is a long way off, but perhaps there may be a small degree of laying down the norms early on.

For basic mapping openstreetmap is completely fine, but if all of the finer granularity (streetview, satellite, traffic data) is required then that costs a lot of money to acquire/maintain - and fair enough if google want to start asking those that use it to contribute.

I like the concept of openstreetmap, I have an account, and I've contributed a couple of edits for the area where I live. However, what really seems to be missing is a decent way of getting directions. The only service for this that I know of based on OSM is yournavigation.org, and the quality of its results is simply unusable.

As an example, try the following in both yournavigation.org and google maps:

I think this is more of an ideological move. Google Maps is not free content like Wikipedia itself. OpenStreetMap however, shares many of the same values as Wikipedia itself; such as its use of an environment that encourages contribution by others, the use of licensing that encourages the sharing and rebuilding of content instead of forbidding it, and so on.

I think this is more of an ideological move. Google Maps is not free content like Wikipedia itself.

You are probably right about this. Unlike the previous examples of major Google Maps users switching to OpenStreetMap that were triggered by Google's pricing changes, this particular case is primarily based on the compatible ideals of OSM and Wikipedia. On the Wikipedia blog post announcing OSM support for the app, they even explicitly state: "This closely aligns with our goal of making knowledge available in a free and open manner to everyone. This also means we no longer have to use proprietary Google API

Not 3 stories ago we get a post about how android is not a good buisiness model because apple is making 250x as much on every i-device sold as google does on every android device (http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/12/04/08/0546247/google-earns-2-per-handset-apple-575). Perhaps suggesting that its better for business to have the walled garden approach. Now there's this story about how google is losing out because a competitor is more open. Based on that it seems google is toast because they are too open while also not open enough. Seems rough to be getting attacked from all sides but then again, consistent $billions in profit probably soften the blow.

easy, for every single good open source thing, you have to wade though a 40 mile wide pile of shit open source things.

People always act like there is something wrong with others for not seeing it before, but the reality of open source is that any drunk/child/failing student/general moron/company/or software genius can make it, and oh boy is there a fuckton of the stuff, with a fair majority of it being right up shit.

You cant see it coming cause its like looking for a needle in a haystack.

But Open Street Map's founder Steve Coast works for Microsoft. Both Microsoft and "Apple" are backing OSM. Both Bing and OSM share map data. So yeah, OSM is gaining lots of momentum, because Apple and MS want it to replace Google maps and have financially motivated it.

The way I see it -- note, that this is pure conjecture on my part -- is that this is not some ideological or heroic move on Wikipedia's part to support open source on their mobile app.

Waze is fantastic, it's based on Open Street Maps, it provides turn by turn directions, but even better than that it lets you share data like road hazards, police locations, traffic perils, and so on.

You can get it for iOS, Android and I think even Blackberry at the moment. Probably even WP7.

One of the nicer things is that you can use it as a tool to record new roads it does not know about yet, and submit them - a regional overseer will review any additions/corrections and thus everyone gets better data.

Actually, I've been pretty impressed with OpenStreetMap and the places I've been. That said, I've also occasionally run into missing and incorrectly labeled things.

One of the cool things with OSM, though, is that you can fix the issues. Go buy an inexpensive bike GPS (I use a Garmin Edge 205 [garmin.com]), ride around your neighborhood and map the streets. It's a pretty entertaining way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Getting the data into it can be a little tricky if you're not good with the various file formats, but it's pretty well documented. I would imagine that there are smartphone apps for doing this as well (the person above mentioned [slashdot.org] Waze [waze.com])

If you're more of a couch potato, you can actually go through satellite images and add mapping information from those. Or you can just go through existing maps and enhance them with some local intelligence--I went through and added bike lanes to the streets that I knew had them and added appropriate connections from bike paths to streets. About the only issue you need to be concerned with (from a legal standpoint) is that you should avoid copying information from other maps (eg, Google) until you actually read the terms of service.

Unlike a lot of open projects, you don't need to be a computer science major to contribute. In this case, you don't even need to be an expert cartographer. So rather than complaining that nobody has updated your area since 2003, go ahead and do it!

You don't even need a gps - when you go to edit a map on the OSM website, you'll have the option (on by default for me) to see a satellite image underneath. If you know the area, it's pretty easy to use that as a guide for drawing the roads & stuff.

So add it? That's kind of the whole point of OpenStreetMap. If you see a mistake in your neighborhood, YOU can go fix it and it shows up on the map immediately. Adding basic roads for a new subdivision can be done in a few minutes if you are familiar with the area. But of course it is still easier to moan about it on slashdot instead of actually contributing to society.

So add it? That's kind of the whole point of OpenStreetMap. If you see a mistake in your neighborhood, YOU can go fix it and it shows up on the map immediately. Adding basic roads for a new subdivision can be done in a few minutes if you are familiar with the area.

How can they tell a place with "no data yet", from a place with "no data, because there's nothing here"?You can always add it. Wikipedia lacked lots of obvios information at the beggining as well. Look where it is now. And all thanks to people that decided to fill in the gaps.

I've tried really hard to like OpenStreetMaps, even contributed several street names and fixed some bad street geometry issues in my neighborhood... but overall it's next to useless here in Brazil. And I live in one of the largest cities here (metro area with 6 million people).

So, yeah, maybe it's useful in the US and Europe, but not everywhere...

Google doesn't really own any natural monopolies. Android has a big network-effect advantage, as does Google+ (though the latter has very low market share).

The areas where government really has to step in are things like telecoms (especially when monopoly status is codified in law), and situations where somebody has gotten a huge majority where a network effect matters.

I love OpenStreetMap, but in the UK it verges on useless for creating free SatNav software. This is due to the crazy policy the British government has of making the postcode database (that's the Zip code database for you Americans) only available for a price. And the price is thousands of pounds. Navigating without the ability to find postcodes is very unpleasant.

Given that our (United States) Post Office is running a 9+ billion dollar annual deficit, I expect someone over here will be proposing they charge for zip code maps soon enough.